CCHD's quarterly newsletter, Helping People Help Themselves, features a message from the Director, Ralph McCloud, and offers inspiring examples of the good work CCHD funds.
Renewing the Face of the Earth: Organizing for Sustainability and Economic Health on the Western Plains
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2022
Families in the western Plains states have traditionally sustained themselves and their communities through farming and ranching. Over the last 50 years, however, these critical activities have been eclipsed by largescale fossil fuel extraction and huge industrialized agricultural operations.
Read more about how the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC) brings CCHD's vision of solidarity, sustainability, and grassroots cooperation to communities in the northern plains and Rocky Mountain west in the newsletter.
Power to the People: Together New Orleans Provides Refuge from Disasters
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2022
In southern Louisiana, a common thread running through the decades is the region’s almost guaranteed loss of electrical power in the aftermath of natural and manmade disasters. Without electricity, individuals and families lose access to heating, cooling, device charging, communication, information, refrigeration, and sometimes food purchase and preparation. Outages can drag on for weeks, endangering the health and livelihoods of entire neighborhoods.
Read more about how CCHD-funded Together New Orleans works with local community institutions and houses of worship, including Catholic parishes, to form a network of resiliency and response hubs where emergency power is available in disasters in the newsletter.
Community Land Trusts: A Winning Model for Affordable Homeownership
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2022
In the best of times, low-income families find it challenging to locate and retain affordable housing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, prices soared and inventory disappeared, even as some workers lost their jobs and others looked for safer spaces for their children to access remote learning.
Read more about how CCHD-funded groups use innovative solutions that make homeownership possible for low-income families in the newsletter.
Living Synodality: Walking with Those on the Margins
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2022
Pope Francis invited the entire Church to join in a two-year process of listening and dialogue to reflect on the life and mission of the Church in the third millennium. He opened the Synod on Synodality in Rome in October 2021 with the expectation that each diocese will feel welcome to participate in the prayerful journey.
Read more about how CCHD-funded groups help support the outreach mission of dioceses in the newsletter.
From Words to Action: CCHD-Funded Groups Bring Laudato Si' to Life
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2021
In his 2015 environmental encyclical On Care for Our Common Home (Laudato Si'), Pope Francis says that all creation is part of a universal family, and care for the natural world is an integral part of Church teaching on social justice. The pope praises local groups that enrich sociaty by promoting the common good and defending the environment.
Read more about how CCHD-Funded groups are living these principles in the newsletter.
Catholic Labor Network: Defending Workers During and Beyond the Pandemic
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2021
When the pandemic gripped the United States in 2020, 90% of workers in the hotel industry were laid off as the travel business was effectively shut down. Many of the unemployed were low income workers and immigrants. Most lost employer-supported health care. Few had any guarantee of a post-shutdown job.
Read more about how the Catholic Labor Network organized Catholic laity and clergy to secure workers' rights in the newsletter.
CCHD Provides Grants to Fund a Massachusetts Eviction Moratorium
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2021
Years before the COVID-19 pandemic, the housing market in Boston and throughout other areas of Massachusetts was hot and growing hotter. Working-class tenants were displaced from affordable housing by skyrocketing rents as areas “gentrified.”
Read more about how two CCHD-funded groups in Massachusetts worked to obtain a moratorium on evictions in the .
The Post-Pandemic Path Ahead
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2021
Three groups funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) strengthened their networks during the pandemic and developed
innovative strategies that will likely persist after the virus is controlled.
Read more about the ways CCHD-funded groups are continuing and looking ahead in the .
Diocesan Directors: Building Relationships
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2020
Appointed by their bishops or archbishops, CCHD diocesan directors identify, accompany, and build relationships with local groups that may receive CCHD funding. Directors also help parishes understand and practice Catholic social teaching and support the work of CCHD.
Read more about the work of CCHD diocesan directors in the .
Funded Groups Respond to COVID Pandemic
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2020
As the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19 threw the entire nation off kilter, groups funded by the
Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) used their grassroots networks to respond creatively to the pandemic.
Read more about how CCHD-funded groups responded to COVID in the .
ARISE Adelante empowers women, youth, and children in immigrant colonias
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2020
In the lower Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, Hidalgo County is one of the most impoverished areas of the United States. Hardscrabble cities and towns dot the landscape, and thousands of people live in colonias, informal communities on unincorporated land outside city limits.
Typically, the colonias have limited infrastructure such as electricity, septic or sewer systems, and paved roads, and their residents live well below
federal poverty levels.
Read more about ARISE Adelante in the .
PREPARES gives families what social service cannot
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2020
In 2014 the four Catholic bishops of Washington state turned this “audacious idea” into a statewide program that has now recruited and trained 491 volunteers and served more than 16,400 pregnant moms and their families.
Read more about PREPARES in the .
Social Action Leaders for the Future
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2019
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) intern program celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2019. It provides young low-income and middle-income Catholics who are emerging leaders with an opportunity to serve CCHD-funded social ministry and action programs directly, to learn the social teachings of the Church, and to develop valuable leadership skills.
Read more about the CCHD intern program in the newsletter.
Defending the Rights of Workers
By: Beth Griffin
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2019
The Catholic Church has a rich tradition of defending the rights of workers. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum, his groundbreaking encyclical on the rights and duties of capital and labor—the foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching. Rerum Novarum describes the relationships and mutual responsibilities between employers and employees and supports laborers’ right to form unions.
Read more about the Catholic Labor Network in the newsletter.
Past issues of Helping People Help Themselves
Once It's Gone, It's Gone
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2019
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2019
Migrants on the Southern Border
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2018
Taking Milwaukee's North Side from Grim to Grateful
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2018
Hope for Excluded and Overlooked Workers in New Orleans
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2018
A Voice for the Vulnerable
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2018
Working for Justice in Baltimore
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 4, 2017
Opportunity Threads and Industrial Commons
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 3, 2017
Our Border Family: Hope at the Border
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 2, 2017
Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation
Helping People Help Themselves, Issue 1, 2017
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